The Problem: If you run the game at full screen on an Ultrawide monitor, there will be massive amounts of distortion. Gamers get around this by playing in Windowed mode, but it breaks immersion because you constantly have the Windows GUI, the desktop, and the Program title over the action. Also, if you want to play at your native resolution, the top of that window will push the very bottom of the game area off-screen.

We get around this by playing in Borderless Windowed mode. However, there seems to be a nasty glitch in ZOE where the Borderless window will also be stretched, defeating the point entirely.

This guide is for anyone who wants to get the full screen experience, with black bars at the side so the screen is not terribly stretched out. I don’t think this guide is too hard to follow, but you will need some third party apps.

This guide should work for Win 7 / 8 / 10, have only personally tested on Win10.

First you'll want to download the Steam App, "Borderless Gaming".
Your first option - you can download from Steam for $3.99 with this link:
https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/388080/

It goes for $3.99, but is often on sale for less. I only use it for a handful of games, but I still think it is a steal at the retail price. When you pay, you support the developer directly.

Or, if you are savvy, the project is open-source and you can get it for free at GitHub. (Installing / downloading from GitHub is outside the scope of this guide.)
https://github.com/Codeusa/Borderless-Gaming

 

Borderless Gaming is going to remove our borders and preserve our Aspect Ratio. But to get that cinematic experience, we want to black out our desktop from the sides of the screen. For that we will download a second app, “Blackie” – find the link at the top of the discussion post here:
https://gtm.you1.cn/groups/WindowedBorderlessGaming/discussions/0/613939841534076028/

For your convenience: I recommend placing a desktop shortcut for Blackie.exe to the very left or right of your desktop. The reason for this will become apparent later in the guide.

Quick notes on Blackie.exe: This app is pretty self-descriptive: it blacks out your entire monitor. When you run it, you will want to run other programs on top. I prefer to start blackie last in my process. If you find that the window you are working on gets blacked out, use Alt-Tab to switch.

To quit Blackie.exe: Press Alt-tab. Release Tab (keep holding Alt). Now you can mouse over Blackie.exe and you will see an option to close the window. Or, you can just Ctrl+Alt+Delete and kill the process that way.

Okay, we have everything we need. Time to get into the game. Go ahead and Launch ZOE, unironically reminiscing over the spoiler-packed 10 minute opening sequence.

Go into Options > Display. Pick your preferred resolution. Quick cheat sheet:
2560x1080 : Use 1920x1080
3440x1440 : Use 2560x1440
4096x2160 : Use 3840x2160

And so on… basically whatever your monitor’s pixel height is, you want to use the corresponding height in the in-game settings. You can go smaller (for example, for performance reasons) but know that your black borders will surround all 4 sides of the play area.

1. Launch Borderless Gaming
2. If you don’t see a window for Borderless Gaming, then look into the taskbar. Find the icon and Right Click > Show
3. On the left hand column in BG, locate a ridiculously long ZOE process name, should begin something like: ZONE_OF_THE_ENDERS[…]
4. Right Click the process > Add to favorites… > …by the process binary name
5. ZOE appears on the right side column, under Favorites (Automatic)
6. Right-click ZOE process under favorites. Check the following boxes: No Size Change, Always On Top*, Hide Windows Task Bar, (Optionally, you can do Mute in Background if you want)
7. *Pro-tip: move the Borderless Gaming interface so it isn’t overlapping the game window BEFORE you select Always On Top. This will save you some frustration as you finish your settings.
8. Optional: In Borderless Gaming, go to Options > Run On Startup / Start Minimized to Tray. If you do this, you no longer need to run Borderless Gaming before starting up ZOE.

You only need to follow these steps during 1st time setup. After this, ZOE will respect your settings any time you start the game, as long as BG is running 1st.

Note: Borderless Gaming may have its own issues. Sometimes buttons get dropped off the interface, Steam may show that you are “in-game” on BG and not log your playtime in other titles. Any issues I either did not encounter or did not care enough to fix. For support with BG, check out the excellent BG community discussions for all those details, because none of these issues are in-scope for this guide.

Okay, you can now minimize the Borderless Gaming App. Remember how we put a shortcut to Blackie.exe on the side of our desktop? Go ahead and launch that now.
Viola! Voila! – you should now have a cinematic ZOE experience. The app is full height, nothing is clipped off the screen, and the screen is not stretched. Before you enjoy, lets continue to wrapping-up steps and some warnings.

1. ONLY CLOSE ZOE FROM THE IN-GAME MENU: We are using Borderless Gaming to hide the Task Bar. This is great, but it does have one risk: If the game shuts down incorrectly, BG will NOT restore the Windows Task Bar on its own. You have been warned! If the game crashes, you alt+F4, CTRL+ALT+DELETE or whatever, you will miss the Task Bar. As far as I know, the only way to get it back is to restart Windows or possibly sign out & back onto your Windows user account. It’s a pain, I’m sorry.

2. Borderless Gaming has to be running before ZOE to auto-apply settings. You can choose to auto-start BG with your system startup or not. But don’t forget to run BG 1st.

3. Blackie.exe is a little hacky / confusing. (See Step 2 for how to exit that program when you are done.) You could seriously mess somebody up if you leave Blackie.exe running on somebody else’s system, or leave the shortcut where somebody might accidentally launch it and get stuck. I showed you my guide. Please don’t be a ****.

Thanks: to Kojima & team for making one of my all-time favorite games, the devs who remastered for PC, and the Borderless Gaming Devs (I’m pretty sure it is basically one guy maintaining an open-source project, and he may be handing off the reigns soon. As drama-free as possible: thank you for this app, and good luck in the future).

Future of this guide: Unfortunately, I’m not set up well for screen captures right now and just wanted to get this guide out there as quick as possible. In the future, I hope to add some screenshots to better explain steps / show off results.

Ultimately, I hope this guide will be made obsolete through a ZOE patch that properly supports ultrawide resolutions with black bars, or perhaps even full ultrawide FOV someday.